WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday addressed a well-established tenet of life in Washington: The pharmaceutical industry has loads of money and doesn’t hesitate to spend it on Congress.
“They contribute massive amounts of money to political people,” Trump said during an impromptu news conference, turning to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was standing to his side. “I don’t know, Mitch, maybe even to you.”
McConnell let out a short laugh.
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Tired of Congressional gridlock? We need campaign finance reform. It was tried once in recent history but the Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional. The issue was ads run by corporations for one candidate or against another candidate. True or false statements was not the issue. The Court said it encroached too far into the First Amendment and crossed the line into censorship. The court said the law could be revised by Congress that would be lawful in their view. Nothing has happened since.
In my humble and unimportant opinion…. Political ads should be paid for by the taxpayers and voters. Not Super Pacs, rich donors, and corporations. They FCC should give each qualified candidate equal prime time to the TV media, air waves, and social media. Money should never buy an election but it does.
The pharmaceutical industry spent and average of 4 BILLION a year since 1998 on campaign donations and lobbists. More in election years. less is off years. 4 with a B — BILLION dollars. No wonder drugs cost so much. Have to pay for those politician’s lunches with lobbists.
Does anyone really expect drug prices to go down? Not with that kind of money being thrown around Washington.
Ditto Health care. It is a HUGE chunk of our economy. American’s want the best health care someone else’s money can buy. Every health care profession, supplier, and business has a well paid lobby and donate millions and billions of dollars to ensure the status quo. We will not be getting any meaningful health care reform. SOMEBODY has to pay for it and the businesses, government, and consumers simply can’t afford to pay for it anymore.
Blue Cross Blue Shield has a monopoly in Hawaii. The ONLY insurance provider. They tell the hospitals, doctors, therapists, etc. what they will pay regardless of what you bill. Costs are lower but so are premiums. That is great until you get the bill for what your insurance doesn’t cover.
Medicare for all. A single payer system will / has in the past, squeezed down reinbursement for health care service. You take what they give you and if you can’t stay in business with that, then go out of business. They did that with home health agencies decades ago. They opened the floodgates for private home health agencies. They popped up like mushrooms after a spring rain. Gravy train for a decade and then they started squeezing reimbursement. “Not medically necessary” and no payment will be forth coming. Yes, as competition grew, there was overutilization of services. You got therapy and a nurses aid if you needed it or not. They squeezed the industry. Cost contained. Still, to this day my county of 7000 population has way too many home health agencies licensed to serve this area. Nice to have choice but how do you make a dime when my wife’s therapist has to drive 250 miles a day to see 6 people for 20-30 minutes.
Campaign finance reform will solve a LOT of problems for American citizens. Our politicians will pay attention to the voters and not the $Money$ that currently get them re elected
Our government has always stolen money from the monopolies. That is how they all get rich and keep us down. It’s called politics and we teach our children about it but do not tell them the truth.